Portrait+1.5: an effective portrait retouching tool

The best retouching always needs a careful eye, an empathetic heart, and a patient mouse. As a professional portrait retoucher, you are required to emphasize one’s natural features while removing circles and blemishes. If you want to maintain one’s personality, the first thing you need to do is to study his/her character and decide which attributes to accentuate and which to minimize before retouching.

It’s necessary to Map out a portrait retouch strategy before removing freckles once launching the software. In previous version of Portrait+, you can apply any style with one click to instantly enhance your portraits. But now, to offer a more superb service to whomever wants to express individuality, Portrait+ has upgraded its functionality to support customization. Before beginning, learn from its newest features to complete a successful retouch.

Conceal blemishes, balance skin tones and reduce wrinkles to improve the appearance of skin. A person’s skin should be appropriate to his or her age. Creating a perfect skin needs 7 steps: Remove Circles, Remove Blemishes, Foundation, Whiten Skin, Soften Skin, Remove Shine and Blush. Every step provides you a subtle enhancement.

Refine contours of the face to be smooth and flattering. Adjust the intensity to slim face, lift cheeks or enhance nose. Bulges caused by awkward smile, weight, or age should be carefully reduced or smoothed out.

Emphasize eyes to twinkle as a bright star. The eyes are the most important facial attribute to emphasize. A slight change on eye liners, eye color, eye lashes, or eye shadow will give you a refreshing appearance. Brighten eyes, enlarge eyes or shape eyebrows are also available for you.

Deepen smile and whiten teeth to attract people’s sights. Free to change your lipstick that you have never tried before. This simple yet essential step will help you discover and define a brand-new character.

Evaluate the results and save them for next use. You may get accustomed with those styles so as to neglect some details. Check them again to ensure everything is perfectly done. Save your favorite makeup as templates. You can apply them with a click next time. The quality of all retouched photos can be customized to meet your requirement.

If you want to take a free trail, please click here to get more information.

Zoo Photography through a Wire Fence

It has been reported that our local zoo has introduced several alpacas, which has arouse great attention. During the weekend, many parents will take their child to take a visit to those special guests. Of course, photographing this happy moment is hard to be missed. But trying to shoot an interesting subject behind a wire fence can be a challenge. So how do you minimize the impact of the fence in your shots? Here are a few quick tips:

Lion photographed by John Hodgkin

Switch to Manual Focusing. Your camera may not know what to focus on – the fence or the object behind it. Switch to manual focus mode and you’ll be in complete control of what is in and out of focus.

Get close to the Fence. Try to make the fence so out of focus. To do this one strategy is to get up very close to the fence – so close your lens has no chance of focusing on it. It may not be possible to be right up against a fence but the closer the better.

Use a Large Aperture. Choose a large aperture will help to narrow the depth of focus and will hopefully through the lens even further out of focus.

Wait until Your Subject is away from the Fence. If your subject is moving around behind the fence, wait until they are a little further back from the fence to take the shot. The closer they are to the fence the more the fence will be in focus.

A mandrill, photographed by John Hodgkin

Position Your Lens to Shoot Through Larger Gaps. This one isn’t rocket science but if the fence has largish openings you’ll do better to position these gaps in the middle of your frame.

Avoid Reflections. If there are reflections from the sun or other lights coming off the fence you’ll find the fence becomes even more noticeable. Try to find a part of the fence that is shaded – or get someone to stand in a way that casts a shadow on the fence.

Incorporate the fence into your composition. Consider breaking all the above rules to try that out!

Great Angles for Food Photography

Food Photography is very similar to photographing people in a sense that each person has her best side. Considering the variety of food out there, diverse cooking and presentation styles, the final results are endless. Here are top 10 angles for Food Photography from digital photography school.

Angle 1: Head-on Zen:

The camera is completely centered to the subject. This created a very clean contemporary look and feel.

Angle 2: From Above:

Camera is positioned directly above the subject and perfectly centered.

Angle 3: Lost in Space:

For this shot, food was placed directly onto the white plexiglass surface; a soft box was positioned below the plexi.


Angle 4: Tilt Towards:

Camera is tilted right, so the subject tilts counterclockwise and the dish is welcoming you in, motivating the spectator to indulge in image.

Angle 5: Tilt Away:

Camera is tilted left, so the subject tilts clockwise, pulling away from you, engaging the viewer the desire to follow.

Angle 6: Close up and personal

Don’t be afraid to get close to your subject. When you are shooting close ups, the point of reference loses its importance, so any camera angle will produce an appetizing image.

Angle 7: Above with Perspective:

The camera is positioned above the front of the subject and then tilted up until the subject fills the frame. The photograph will engage the eye to scan the image from the foreground to the background.

Angle 8: Diagonal:

Turn you camera so the subject starts in one corner and ends in the opposite corner, breaking the space diagonally.

Angle 9: With respect to the Line:

Align parallel lines to the vertical edge of the frame. This created a very monumental and unusual composition, granting unprecedented importance to this slice of a regular cheese cake.

Angle 10: Gentle tilt:

If the camera had been leveled, then the middle wedge would create a horizontal line that would divide the composition in two sections and forcing the eye to travel away from the center.

Conclusion:

Try to forget about the rule of thirds and everything you just learned, just move around your subject and really try to see it and when you see it, draw the camera to your eye and start framing. 

Shooting in the Rain

Weather is getting much colder these days. And the continuous rain plays as a role of “accomplice”. Many people hate rainy days for it means wet clothes, crowded traffic. But it reminds me of one classic movie, Singing in the Rain. If we change our perspective, the annoying rainy day can also turn into lovely one. Now, let’s learn some preparation before shooting in the rain. With some proper planning you can have a great time outside.

Soumya

Be prepared. A large ziploc bag takes up no room in your bag and can be used in a pinch to cover your camera. You can shoot through a ziploc bag as a last ditch effort to get the shot.

Invest in rain gear. Many companies make specific bags for different DSLR models that are designed to use most of the functions on the camera and offer a better shoot-through plastic protector. They are cut generously enough to cover you and your backpack or messenger style bag and help protect it from the elements.

Look for the reflections.  Rain collecting in streets can cause some beautiful reflections. Point your lens down and look for reflections in the water of surrounding scenery and frame accordingly.

Artem Tschaikowsky

Increase your ISO. With the rain come clouds which block the sun – these darker shooting situations are similar to shooting near dusk, so a higher ISO sensitivity is needed.

Take a friend along. Take a friend with you to help hold an umbrella, and to be a second set of eyes to help look for reflections, patterns and subject matter.

Rinse it off. If you take camera gear, waterproof point and shoot or bagged DSLRs to the beach or in salt water, rinse them off with clean fresh water before they dry.  The salt in the water can cause corrosion and dry-rot the rubber gaskets that help seal the memory card door.

Photography in Golden Hour

If there's one thing that can make or break a photograph more than any other, it's lighting. You might have the most incredible landscape or stunning portrait model, but without the right quality of light you can still be left with a flat, dull, and uninspiring photo. To take a stunning photo, it is important to take advantages of "golden hour”- the first hour of light after sunrise and the last hour of light before sunset.

Rim Lighting

A huge benefit to having portraits backlit with the sun is achieving that wonderful rim lighting – where the edges of your model are outlined by a thin thread of light. When photographed at the right angle, you have an incredibly powerful portrait.

Use a Wide Aperture

For a truly artistic approach to shooting these golden hour portraits, you can open your aperture wide up which will give you a fantastic shallow depth of field and the setting sun can provide a huge amount of light that can turn into beautiful Bokeh.

Foreground Interest

A great layering technique that you’ll find often with these portraits is to shoot with a wide aperture and place something in the foreground – usually some type of foliage. Lock the focus on your model and the foreground will become blurred – giving a natural, soft layering effect that adds depth and interest to your image.

Colors in Autumn Photography

Photo by Christopher O’Donnell

There is no doubt that the golden and red leaves on a background of lush green grass and beautiful blue skies are wonderful things. So how do you capture it? Darren from digital photography school offers us a few starting points to boost the colors in your autumn photography.

Use a Polarizing Filter

The saturation of colors that you get with one of these is fantastic. It is particularly useful in getting lovely blue skies but you’ll find that it decreases some of the haze that you often get at this time of year also.

Shoot in the Golden hours

While you can get great results at any time of the day – shoot autumn colors at the end of the day just before sunset when the light is golden. This accentuates the reds and golds even more than normal.

Photo by Christopher O’Donnell

Don’t ignore the Overcast days

Some people keep their cameras in their bags on days where the sun isn’t shining – but they can actually be the best days, for they help create a mood that you can’t get on a sunny day.

Look for contrasts

One way to accentuate the colors in your shots is to think about framing your shots in such a way that the different colors contrast with one another.

Photo by Zitona

Avoid shooting into the Sun

Shooting into the sun will result in shadows, lower saturation of colors and lens flare (which further reduces the impact of colors. If you do have to shoot into the sun use a lens hood or shield your lens with something to avoid lens flare.

Play with White Balance

Sometimes Auto mode with White Balance won’t give you the most vibrant results. Warm up your colors by increasing the color temperature a touch (not too much).

Underexpose your shots

Pull back the exposure on your shots a touch and you’ll find that it gives your colors a slightly deeper saturation.

10 Occupations Relate with Photography

For anyone who is studying photography, below is a list of photography-related jobs. If you find it hard to make a job selection, you may take below occupation into consideration.

 

Portrait Photographer

The major photographic targets of portrait photographers include characters, graduation ceremony, wedding, and pets. They must understand light-transporting principle and get responsible for everyone’s position in photos.

Colorist

Compared with photo retoucher, colorist is much more like an artist. Carefulness is the most essential, without it, a work is easily ruined.

Commercial Photographer

Most of commercial photographers work for magazines or advertisements and aim to produce appealing and attractive photos. Basically, they have personal photo studios.

Freelance Photographer

Freelance Photographers work at home by himself. They don’t have a studio but they will rent model or photographing while traveling. Some freelance photographers only get enthusiastic for single activity, such as sports, nature or art.

Industrial Photographer

Industrial photographers work for company to photograph a large amount of works especially some architecture and mechanical equipment.

Laboratory Supervisor

Laboratory supervisors process films to correctly exposure at the later stage.

Photography Salesperson

Aiming to make studio’s work appreciated and purchased by more people, Photography Salespersons apply with commercial manners to attract more attention from the public.

Retoucher

Retoucher is responsible for the final enhancement of work. Through removing extra stuff, sharpening, denoising and more, a photo is perfectly enhanced.

Black-and-White Printer

The photography today can be divided into color and black-and-white. But, several decades of years ago, it appears black-and-white most. After studying at special schools, you can become a black-and-white printer to beautify and enlarge old photos.

Photography Instructor

After teaching lessons in colleges, art schools or high schools etc., a professional photographer becomes photography instructor. Their duty is to cultivate students to become the professionals.